• Water

EPA Proposes New Rules for Getting Lead Out of Drinking Water – More Slowly

• drinking water
• Flint Water Crisis
• lead

The Trump administration — after years of promising and more than 9 years of work by EPA — finally issued a proposed rule on lead in drinking water that does not require the removal of the estimated 6 million or more lead service lines that remain underground throughout the nation, and in fact, it doubles the amount of time allotted to replace lead pipes in water systems that contain high levels of lead.

Why This Matters:  They may try to put lipstick on this pig (sorry for the old pun), and it could have been worse, but when the Trump Administration brags that they put this rule in place, the question should be why did they not do more? This proposed rule is hardly sufficient to deal with the scope and the harm caused by lead in drinking water in this nation. 

• Water

7.5 Million Californians Affected by Toxic Chemicals in Drinking Water

• Califorina
• drinking water
• PFAS
• water

A recent study by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that 74 community water systems in California, which serve 7.5 million people, were contaminated with toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS between 2013 and 2019. Why This Matters: The chemical companies that have made these chemicals for use in their products (like DuPont and 3M) largely pass along the cleanup costs of water sources onto municipalities and taxpayers.

• Water

Water Crisis Deepens in Zimbabwe – 2 Million People’s Supply Cut Off

• #safedrinkingwater
• climate change
• Drought
• United Nations
• water
• Zimbabwe

CBS News and CNN are reporting that because of a major drought in Zimbabwe that occurred for months, more than 2 million residents of Zimbabwe’s capital and surrounding towns were without tap water on Tuesday because city officials had to shut down the city’s main treatment plant — they do not have the money to […]

• Water

Trump Administration Rolls Back WOTUS Rule, Undermines the Clean Water Act

• Clean Water Act
• factory farmer
• non-point pollution
• nutrient pollution
• runoff
• wetlands

Yesterday the Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency rolled back one of the most important environmental rules put in place by the Obama Administration – the Waters of the U.S. Rule (“WOTUS”) – which protects wetlands that are the best natural barriers to storm surge and flooding and also keeps agricultural pollution out of our waterways.  […]

• Water

PFAS Found in Drinking Water at 90 More Army Installations

• #safedrinkingwater
• Army
• drinking water
• EWG
• PFAS
• toxic

Yesterday, the Department of Defense Task Force looking into the problem, found that the drinking water at an additional 90 current and former Army and Army National Guard installations nationwide is contaminated with the toxic fluorinated chemicals called PFAS, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which obtained the information via a Freedom of Information […]

• Water

Fish Kills in Alaska and Indiana Make Headlines

• Alaska
• climate change
• cyanide
• fish
• global warming
• Salmon

As the summer fishing season comes to a close, two recent stories of fish kills made headlines in Alaska and Michigan.  CNN reports that In Alaska, the historic heatwave there is, according to scientists, resulting in the death of at least a thousand salmon because they had to swim through water that was too warm — the die-offs include several varieties of Alaskan salmon, including sockeye, chum and pink salmon — and are an added threat to populations of these commercially valuable fish. 

• Water

Newark Fast Tracks Lead Pipe Replacement

• clean water
• drinking water
• EPA
• lead
• Newark
• water

We wrote the other week about Newark’s ongoing water crisis and the city’s plan to distribute bottled water to residents after water filters that were previously made available to the public lacked the ability to filter out lead. Now New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka announced a new $120 million plan yesterday to fast-track […]

• Water

Newark Offers Bottled Water to Address Water Crisis, Residents Grow Weary

• clean water
• drinking water
• lead
• New Jersey
• Newark

After it was determined that the 40,000 filters Newark city officials gave out to residents to address the ongoing water crisis weren’t actually filtering out lead, the city decided to begin distributing bottled water. In a startling echo of Flint, residents of Newark have been kept in the dark about the safety of their drinking […]

• Water

A Fourth of the World’s Population Faces Severe Water Shortages

• climate change
• Drought
• groundwater

According to a newly released report from the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, a quarter of the world’s population across 17 countries are living in regions of extremely high water stress. The reasons behind the water crises go deeper than previously thought as new WRI hydrological models found that water withdrawals globally have more […]

• Water

Clean Water Emerging as A Top Tier Campaign Issue

• clean water
• Flint
• Flint Water Crisis
• Infrastructure
• PFAS
• safe drinking water

Last week, Senators Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand made safe drinking water a key environmental plank in their campaigns. 

• Water

Here We Go Again: Harmful Algal Bloom Forms in Lake Erie

• harmful algal blooms
• Lake Erie
• phosphorus
• pollution
• scum

As has happened every year since 2002 starting in mid-July, a sizeable and harmful algal bloom has now formed in the Western Basin of Lake Erie, and NOAA on Monday issued a bulletin that the bloom “extends from Maumee Bay up to 13 miles north along the Michigan coast, and up to 15 miles east along the Ohio coast. Surface scum has been observed offshore of the Michigan coast.”  NOAA warned everyone out on the water or the beach in this area not to swim and to keep pets out as well anywhere where the green-colored scum is forming.   If you or your pet does come into contact, be sure to wash off right away and don’t let your pet lick the exposed fur.  

• Water

New Study Find Water Underwater

• groundwater
• India
• submarine. seabed
• water
• water shortage

Using high tech equipment usually employed to find oil and gas resources under the seabed, researchers have found another precious natural resource — a huge freshwater aquifer stretching from the coast of Massachusetts to New Jersey.  The brackish (somewhat salty) water, according to the study, which was published in “Scientific Reports,” would need to be desalinized before consumption, but it would not require the energy-intensive process currently undertaken in some countries around the world.